Irish Planning Analysed

Maire Hoctor has been in correspondence with the Nenagh Guardian complaining about the treatment she received at the Nenagh Hospital rally a few weeks back when she was ordered to stop talking by an irate member of the public and was forced to sit down when the same member of the public received general support from the rest of the crowd.

Anyway, in her missives to the paper Maire alleged that the citizen who so disrespected her on the fateful day was a member of Sinn Féin. She’s wrong. I’m not.

And thank you for uncovering the identity of KingKane: the genius who had the wherewithal to record Deputy Hoctor’s recent appearance on Prime Time when out takes of the Deputy failing to read from her own notes were broadcast by accident. He’s Dan Sullivan and he has an excellent blog at http://dansullivan.blogspot.com . Good luck to him in his campaign for a Seanad seat in the next election (if there’s still a Seanad).

Which reminds me. My own campaign for a Council seat in the next local elections has hit a snag. Around Christmas, It was odds on that the Fine Gael party would run me in East Clare. They (said they) needed three candidates to run in an area where they’re likely to win two seats. The party has one extremely strong candidate in Joe Cooney who’s immensely popular, hardworking and a shoo in to retain his seat. But for a while there weren’t any obvious heads ready to fill the ticket: the word going around was that Cllr. Mashem McInerny wasn’t going to run again and there wasn’t even a whisper about who’d run at number three.

The way it turned out, Mashem decided to run after all and then a chap from Whitegate, Pat Burke, put his name forward and snagged some official endorsements from local branches (which I didn’t have ) and which meant that, were I to be included on the ticket, someone would have to make way for me. That wasn’t about to happen.

So I’m not running or Fine Gael. And, even though winning a seat in this area is a distinct possibility, it’s a bit late to be thinking about putting myself forward as an independent. Without an organisation behind me, it would be very hard to gain any real traction. So... we'll see.

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I’m checking out an excellent situation which I’ll be posting about soon regarding the smallest construction project in the history of the State and how it was handled by An Bord Pleanala. You’re all going to love it. And I’ve been following up on one of the new ways in which the planning system has been revealed to be a disaster: unfinished, rat infested housing estates which Councils are refusing to do anything about.

And, if you haven't already, check out the comments left by Mossie and Eamonn on the March 4th post.